Are algorithms so important? A wise one once said: when the data is well organized the algorithm become a consequence.

What efficient means? Spend a week to polish an algorithm for someting executed twice a week is waste your time. Your human time is generally more important than CPU cycles.

Oh obviously there are case where algorithms are important: come here at the monastery, propose your problem and your solution; many neat brains will offer better solutions, cooler algorithms.

One example? search here at the monastery for primality test on numbers; you'll find many many different solutions and approachs. Then you can look at some good math module on cpan, and search how primality check is solved by these modules which have to be fast and reliable.

Now about the time to spend to learn other languages; learn is always a good thing and if you have time and will learn other language too. I've no so much time, or well i prefere doing something else but i can assure you that I know just Perl, i'm somehow intermediate (despite my monk level) with a long experience and every problem i needed to solve within computers i solved with Perl, also for curiousities and itchings i used Perl and i'm still happy with it.

Last suggestion; create an account on perlmonks, look and ask.

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